FAIRHOPE, Alabama -- During a meeting attended by several upset city staffers Monday, the City Council voted to end the city’s health benefit program for retired workers and to increase the amount that current employees must pay toward their health coverage.

Mayor Tim Kant said Tuesday that he plans to veto the council decision this week. He said the council’s "open-ended" efforts to cut expenses in the past several months have become counter-productive.

"If the mayor and City Council thought this way 20 years ago, we wouldn’t have the beautiful community we have today," Kant said. "If we try to put a dollar value on every single thing we do, Fairhope will lose everything people come here for."

It would be Kant’s fifth veto. The other four -- all seeking to nullify actions taken since the current council took office in 2008 — have been overturned by a three-fourths vote of the council.

More than 100 residents, including many current and retired city workers, attended Monday’s sometimes-acrimonious meeting. Before the 3-2 vote was taken, only one employee was allowed to speak to the council.

"About three years ago, the city said: ‘No overtime.’ Fine. Then it’s no merit raises. OK, that’s understandable, we need to cut back. Then no cost-of-living raise," said Dotson Brown, a 25-year worker with the city’s Public Works Department.

"Now we’re getting to the point of cutting what we already have," Brown said. He said he and other employees live on a "shoestring budget" at home.

Brown said the proposed change -- to decrease the city’s contribution toward an employee’s family coverage from 100 percent to 90 percent -- would "hurt us a lot more than you think."

The city would continue to pay 100 percent for an individual employee’s coverage.

Lowering the city’s contribution will cost each employee an average of $93 per month and will save the city an estimated $200,000 annually, city officials have said.

"The main reason I came to work for the city was the benefits," Brown said.

Other city workers said after the session that they were barred from speaking during Monday night’s meeting. They said city officials had informed them that, in order to talk during the "public comment" period, they should have notified the city clerk before noon Monday.

Early during Monday’s meeting, Councilman Rick Kingrea said he wanted to address what he said was erroneous information in an unsigned, unofficial memo sent last week to city employees. The memo said the council was trying to sneak in the benefits changes without workers finding out first.

"We’ve been talking about this for six months. If you don’t know about it, it’s your own fault," Kingrea told the audience.

Aside from decreasing the city’s health insurance contribution for family coverage, the ordinance would eliminate the city’s contributions to its dental plan as well as end the city’s policy of paying 90 percent of retirees’ health benefits until they become eligible for Medicare.

Kingrea said that the changes to benefits would go into effect Oct. 1, 2011, giving the council a year to come up with a better way to reduce employee costs.

"The mayor, if he has a better plan he hasn’t mentioned it in the last six months, but if he has one he can bring it forward," Kingrea said.

Under the plan as it currently operates, retired employees are only dropped from the city’s coverage after they have begun to receive coverage from both Medicare Part A and Medicare Part B.

Medicare Part A covers only hospital costs while Part B covers doctor visits and other out-of-hospital services.

Stankoski said he was concerned that the ordinance would remove the wording about Part A and Part B. The new wording would state only that retired employees will be covered "until they are covered by Medicare."

"We certainly don’t want any of our retirees to be left out in the cold," Stankoski said.

Council President Lonnie Mixon said that the wording was the result of much research by the city’s Financial Advisory Committee. But Mixon said that "if we pass this now, we can always come back and amend that."

Mixon called for a vote. Council members Debbie Quinn and Mike Ford voted against the health care changes. All others voted in favor. Immediately, most city workers left the meeting.

The city’s Financial Advisory Committee was created in July of last year and has recommended an array of cost-cutting efforts enacted by the council, including the decision in June to stop paying for employee cell phones.